Cell No Six
by L. Catherine Dion
Summary: Reese gets a letter from a detective who used to work undercover with her. Now up in Crescent City, CA, something's going very, very wrong with Detective Ballantine...and it has something to do with Crews. Crews/Reese
1. The Letter

The scent of wet wood was everywhere, it got in a man's clothes, got into his soul and stayed there like smell of the sea on Lake Earl Drive where you could feel the storm rolling in. Down the road, past the one good post office, not far from Pelican Bay State Prison itself, sat a blue trimmed house with a circular gravel drive and the broken remains of a huge redwood tree too massive to take out.

Some kid had taken a key saw to a part of it at one time, maybe before he got there and fuchsia blossoms hung from the eaves of his house, bobbing in the breeze as he walked out the door onto the wide wraparound porch. The summer air hit his face, heavy with the scent of rain.

He knew before he got to his mailbox there was something in it.

His hands turned the plain white envelope over in his hands, over and over as he walked past his mailbox. There was something dead in it again. _Again_. Detective Patrick Ballantine closed his eyes just for a moment and kept walking. He walked right down the road past an old twisted tree, past the smell of horses two houses over. Gravel was stuck to the bottom of his shoe and he sighed as it scraped against the worn asphalt at the side of the road.

An old faded blue Mercedes passed him as thunder rumbled threateningly and he kept walking until he came to the post office. Twenty minutes until it was a downpour.

"Mel," Ballantine rumbed quietly, leaning into the counter. "I wanna get this off quick. Overnight. You can do that, right?"

"Sure thing, Bally," Mel said, a broad smile crossing his lips. He scrubbed at his white hair for a moment and Ballantine realized he was clutching the letter. He put it down on the counter and stared at it a moment, reading his Sharpie pen scrawl.

_Dani Reese_, it read along with her address, _open immediately upon receipt_.

There was no way he could afford to call her. Not now. Not even when this whole godforsaken thing began. He only hoped she'd be able to help before it was too late. She was the last thing he had hope in.

Mel's fingers shook mostly with the arthritis he'd been suffering from for the last few years. Ballantine watched the letter get metered for overnight delivery and let out a sigh.

It was time to get the fuck out of Crescent City.


	2. Save Some Light

"God, Crews, " Reese muttered, leaning her head against the car window as she waited for the light to change. "Enough. I get it and really, it sounds sorta fun, but that's not even remotely feasible."

"Tell me you're doing something better on a Thursday evening," he said, grinning. "C'mon, Reese! It's a _solar farm_. You haven't--"

"Crews, I'm tired, we just spent three hours dicking around with a crackhead so high his hair is burning--" He made a noise. She glared at him and watched him take something brown and fuzzy out of his pocket. "No. No _way_. Can't you wait for-- Is that a goddamn kiwi?"

He was laughing at her.

Her eyebrows arched.

"Green light!" he said, beaming.

"One of these days," she threatened, stepping on the gas, "I'm _going_ shoot you."

"You don't mean that," he said confidently. She didn't and they both knew it. "If you did, I'd have to request another partner and then it just wouldn't work right. The whole balance of the world would be thrown off and there'd be world wide disaster and maybe black holes and the fabric of the--"

Reese tightened her grip on the steering wheel.

"I'll go," she sighed softly. "If you shut up, I'll go."

"You'll watch, right?" he asked, his face serious.

"Sure," she said with a shrug. "You gonna can it?"

He smiled.

She could see the brilliant gleam of victory on his face and concentrated on driving back to the station. He shut up, too, which was impressive. Maybe they both had a victory or at least some sort of truce going on here. _Maybe_. He still said absolutely nothing even when they sat down to do paperwork and all through the time she was scribbling up the report to give to Tidwell.

He was even quiet when they walked out toward the elevator, though he bounced a little as he punched the ground level. Reese flicked his keys at him and he caught them, surprised. Her eyebrows arched and his went up as well. Reese crossed her arms and watched him lounge against the wall until the elevator _pinged._

Reese was out the door first, the sharp snap of her heels ringing across the concrete. She heard Crews fall in next to her, close enough that their fingers almost brushed. She didn't pull away and neither did he, not until she realized she was headed toward the driver's side.

Habit.

She caught herself at his slight headtilt and frowned when he dangled the keys to ask if she really wanted him to drive. Reese shrugged and walked awkwardly around the car to the passenger side. She struggled to not snatch the keys from him _anyway_ and buckled in. She was trying to be patient just _once_ and it was _his _damn solar farm.

"You don't want me to drive," Crews said, amused. "You can drive my car if y--"

"Just drive," she said somewhat tersely. Reese caught the slight curl of his lips as they pulled out and headed straight out of the city. He didn't put on Zen and she didn't touch the radio.

They rode in silence and she wondered where he managed to stash that damn kiwi. It probably went back into his pocket along with five oranges, two apples, and a pear, maybe those damn lychees he was always going on about. Reese wondered if he was going to start using fruit as a weapon.

They turned onto a dusty road what seemed a very long time later and she glanced at the long wooden fence they'd just turned past. Her eyebrows rose at the rows and rows of solar panels. A glance at Crews revealed contentment as they pulled up, in fact, he radiated a smile that was way bigger than the one currently on his face. She resisted rolling her eyes as the car stopped.

"You promised you'd watch, right?" he asked in a quiet voice.

"Yeah," she muttered. "I'm watching."

He got out, walked around and pulled her door open, shaking his head. She gave him a proper glower when he extended his hand, then ignored it, and shoved herself out. The thump she made as her boots hit the dusty earth raised a cloud of dust that swirled in the wind. Crews tugged her to a spot pretty far from the solar panels and she opened her mouth to ask him what the fuck they were doing, but he put his fingers to her lips and pointed. She leaned back against him, still frowning, as the panels shifted toward the sun. In an instant, as each panel turned, the glow of the setting sun was caught and reflected in a dazzling display.

Reese blinked at the way light shimmered in a red orange to sunny yellow wash and felt Crews's arm steady her against him.

"_Damn_," she murmured, impressed.

"That's what I said." He settled the point of his chin against her hair and she didn't bother to shrug him off, for once, almost enchanted by the reflection. They stayed there like that long after the sun set, the both of them quiet until his cell phone went off.

"Reese?" he asked. "I gotta go. Ted's having a little trouble with his car..."

"I gotta..." she started and sighed. "Yeah. Just drop me off at my place. It was nice," Reese gestured. "The sunset."

"It _was_ nice," he murmured as she pushed away and walked toward the car. "You wanna do it again sometime?"

"Maybe," she said, climbing into the passenger side. "_Maybe_."

He smiled the entire time they were in the car and when he dropped her off, he was still grinning that little absurdly happy smile of his. She shook her head and fished her keys out of her pocket as she moved up the stairs and into her apartment. Reese froze as she started to slide her key into front lock.

It was open.

She speed dialed Crews.

"Get your ass back here, Crews," Reese snapped. "I need back up."

"What's..." he trailed off and she could hear him already turning around, then parking.

"My front door's been jimmied," she said. His voice sounded behind her and she half leaned into him.

"I can see that," he said. "I got your six."

Reese nodded, nudging her front door open with her gun. It wa dark and she carefully flipped the light switch. There was a man sitting on her couch. A very, very dead man. A very, very dead man she _knew_.

"Oh Jesus," Reese breathed. "That's. That's Ballantine. That's...Patrick Ballantine."

She could hear Crews dialing as she glanced down at the mail and the familiar neat handwriting on an envelope. She opened it without thinking and read the first few lines.

_Reese,_

_I know this is fucked up, me coming to you after all this time, but there's no one else I can trust. I'm pretty sure they're trying to kill me. Tomas Harriman's men are coming for me. Just in case I don't make it to tell you this in person, this letter will explain everything. Listen to the tapes, Reese. I only pray I'm not dead by the time you get this. Cell number six. It's all about cell number six. Crews, your partner, he'll know about it. Ask him.  
_

Crews peered over her shoulder, reading along with her until she shoved the letter back into its flipped a few more lights on and pulled out her gloves, her jaw tight as she carefilly walked the scene. The _scene_ that was on her couch, in her apartment, and screwing up her evening. Crews pried open Ballantine's hand.

"I got a card," he said and then there was silence. "It's an ace of clubs with block letters on it." He frowned, his expression dark. "Cell number six."

"What the hell?" Reese said with a sigh, her fingers brushing at the tip of something protruding from Ballantine's chest. "Is that a crossbow?" She frowned deeply and realized he was pinned upright with a metal, titanium alloy was her best guess, crossbow arrow straight through his heart. Reese fell back against her heels and found that Crews was staring at her.

"Cell number six," Crews repeated slowly. "That's Pelican Bay. That's William Blank."


	3. Waiting Pains

Charlie Crews sat listening to Tidwell, watching his mouth move as lights flickered blue and red through Reese's apartment windows, illuminating the room in flashes. He watched Reese, too, watched the way she'd folded herself up tight and thin lipped as CSU rummaged around collecting evidence. Her eyes followed detectives Cox and Pendle as they walked the scene. Her scene, her apartment. Underneath her silence he could feel her fraying, especially when she half-glanced in his direction. He held his own, pushing Pelican Bay back as he blinked. Tidwell was still talking. He was _always_ talking.

"Crews," Tidwell said for the third time. "You off in another country or you gonna tell me what's what?"

He thought about it for a moment and took his time, though he knew he was irritating Tidwell. The man was just going to have to be annoyed, because Crews had thoughts in every direction (including the fact that there were peaches sitting on his counter that needed to be eaten and that he should take Reese back to his place because it was _safe_ --she ought to be safe-- but she'd probably smack him if he suggested it _now_, so he didn't, and Tibet, he was thinking about Tibet, too, and airfare and how he'd _really_ like to _get away_ from all of this but he couldn't) and it took him a moment.

It wasn't as dramatic as Reese's moment, though. That moment had been at this very table, right here. There were echoes of it even now. Well, not _far_ from the table, at least. Rick Larson was still in prison, still there, serving his time, and Reese was still Reese and _that_ was very good. He glanced at his hands, which were flat against the table (red and blue and pale), and tipped his chin to offer Tidwell a flash of a smile.

"I was thinking about Tibet," he said. Reese shot him a look and he smiled again, breezy-like, and ignored the nudge she gave him under the table. She hadn't kicked him yet. He took that as a good sign. Tidwell looked up at the ceiling for a moment, sighing. "And I was also thinking we need to grab CCTV footage. I didn't catch the plates, but there was a gray Olds that ran a red at that intersection. Might be our guy." Had to be their guy.

He watched them take out the couch, dead body and all. Reese swore under her breath and looked away, vaguely unsteady. Tidwell hovered unconsciously, too close for comfort, and she rose irritably.

"Getting air," she said, her voice tight as she headed out the door. Her fingers brushed the door frame, curling tight before they let go. He watched her fingertips tremble for a moment and then recede. The space where she had been was empty and still full of her.

Crews sat for a moment, fingers steepled, staring past Tidwell, past the confines of the room and all the bodies. CCTV. Gray Oldsmobile. Alero, maybe an Eclipse. He closed his eyes and heard Tidwell move to snap at Cox. Eureka plates. Scratches on the door. Broad, thick muscular shoulders, mid-thirties, Caucasian, male. Hard to tell, but he could have been six feet tall, maybe a hundred-thirty pounds at best. That was it, that was all he'd gotten.

Reese came back in and grabbed a bag once she was assured her bedroom was released and he heard her shoving clothes into the bag, pissed. Crews rose and lounged at the partially open door, waiting. She turned to snap at him, but nothing came out. His eyebrows rose slightly and he watched her bite her lip, then shrug as she glanced at his keys. He dangled them and she darted forward, snagging them before zipping her bag.

They were both silent on the way back to the station.

Her mood worsened by the time they'd pulled up the CCTV footage and he grimaced slightly when she kicked an officer out of the room before working over the video with sharp eyes. Her concentration was absolute and he had the feeling he was just there to observe for the moment. Leaving wasn't an option, so he scribbled out neat notes while she worked. Neither one of them said anything until she prodded him with a sharp _Crews_.

"Eureka license plate, belongs to Dennis Graff, reported stolen two days ago," she said. "Local PD haven't a shred of evidence. They said the cameras didn't catch anything, but screw that. I'm looking anyway." She scrolled through the incident report and the camera shots before jamming her hand into her loose hair, frustrated. "Wait a damn minute."

He peered over her shoulder as she zoomed in on an image.

"That look like the same guy?" she asked, gesturing at the split screen. "Some jackass blew a red after--"

"Same guy," Crews said quietly, his fingers on his tie, absently keeping it from brushing her hair. Reese was already running the man's face through the system. "You wanna get coffee while that runs?"

"God yes," Reese said, rubbing at her face.

"How far do you want to go?" he asked as she rose to snag her jacket. "Cafe Take 5 is around the corner, but closes at ten, or we could go to The Standard. They're open pretty late."

"Shit come back from the labs yet?" He half shrugged and glanced toward their cluster of desks. She followed his eyes and then snorted. "What am I talking about? We won't have anything until mid-morning unless Tidwell's lit some serious fires under their asses." Reese paced, playing with the collar of her jacket with fidgeting fingers.

She wanted a drink. Badly. He could tell.

He took a half moment to scribble a few words on a Post-It and caught her eyes.

"Du-Pars has good coffee," he said quietly. "Pie, too, and hot cakes. Open twenty-four on Farmer's Market, same for the one at Studio City. I had a very, very good strawberry pie there once, but that was a long time ago when Bobby and I were hanging out there when we worked nights. We cou--"

"Fine," she said, waving him quiet as she massaged her temples. Cranky. He knew a cranky Reese when he saw one and he also knew coffee would help ease the edge. So would time away from the station. "At this point, I don't care, just as long as it's good coffee and I don't have to deal with Tidwell breathing down my neck. Lemme grab some files and pack the laptop."

She was gone again before he could take a breath. Crews waited by the elevator until she was finished squirreling things away and thought about peach pie. In all honesty, he was thinking about trying to _make_ peach pie. He had ripe peaches (juicy and fresh and perfect) that needed-- Wait. He'd thought about those peaches at the apartment. Clearly that meant they needed to be eaten. Reese didn't look like she wanted peaches, though. She looked like she wanted to shoot someone.

With a crossbow.

Reese drove, once again silent despite his attempts at conversation. Instead of goading her into some trivial conversation, he watched the streetlights pass and the faces of the pedestrians (most were blank, focused on the world ahead, neon lights coloring them in splashes as the world teetered further into the early morning hours), while the painted lines on the street flicker-flashed, yellow, white, yellow, crosswalk, sidewalk, flash, flash, flash. She was thinking about Ballantine, about his face, about the card, about the words on the card that made Crews's gut twist, about William Blank, too, and the way things were connected.

As they drove, a light spatter of rain sprinkled the window and he watched the drops reflect citylight as Reese pulled to a stop. She turned the engine off and sat there under the orangey glow of the sign that lit an upside down Du-Pars against the rain beaded windsheild. The car _tick, tick, tick_ed as the engine cooled and Reese squeezed her eyes shut. He hated cases like this, the ones that shook her, the ones that meant she lost people she knew. The ones that meant she hid from him, those he hated the most.

"Reese?" he asked quietly.

"This is fucked," she murmured. "It's all fucked, Crews."

"I know," he said simply. Reese peered up at him for awhile, white knuckling the steering wheel, then got out. Crews watched her stiff movements and headed after her. His fingers brushed her elbow and she half turned before lacing her fingers through his and squeezing.

Just once.

The scent of coffee and fresh baked apple pie washed over him as she pulled the door open.


	4. Pie For the Course

Elvis on the Jukebox, Crews pulling _King_ faces over apple pie (humming _Burning Love_ just loud enough to make her pretend she didn't know him), three cups of coffee, and no calls to her cell phone. Or his.

Elvis.

Reese frowned at him.

"_Please, won'tcha help me, I feel like ah'm slippin away_," he drawled, perfectly on pitch. Her eyebrows arched and she pulled his plate away with her fork, spearing a piece of thick pie crust dotted with heavy sugar crystals that shone matte in Du-Par's lighting. He'd joined her in a cup of coffee thirty minutes ago (finished and had another just to keep awake) and with Elvis rolling off his lips like goddamn honey, she was beginning to see why he stuck to _tea_. There were generally no Elvis outbursts when there was tea involved.

One of the waitresses passed by and tipped her coffee pot to refill his empty cup. Reese pulled it away and shoved her own out. Crews angled a _Lawd almighty_ at her and she _kept_ his damn pie, more amused at his dead-on impersonation than she was annoyed. He grinned at the waitress, huge, goofy, and ordered a slice of something lemony.

The woman murmured a comment Reese missed and wheeled away looking charmed at Crews's response. She supposed that was Crews being Crews. That and the woman had recognized him when they'd blown in three hours earlier.

Reese broke off another piece of crust and sighed as she nudged William Blank's file, wiping her fingers on a brown paper napkin before flipping to the next page. Prostie/junkie murders, six cops dead in the final arrest. Talk about fucked up. Maybe more than fucked. The seat creaked as Crews slid out and nudged her over so he could glance at the file.

He didn't really, though. A sideways glance told her he was half gone again, thinking in that other space, listening to the sounds around him, there and not. His long, pale fingers rested against the edge of the table like he'd forgotten they were attached and part of him. Crews shifted and there was a hint of wary uneasiness to it. She finished the rest of the crust in silence, letting him marinate in whatever thoughts were occupying him.

The lemon pie brought him back, right along with the cup of ginger-peach iced tea. He came back in snatches, his slow smile to the waitress measured, the blink afterward a little more lively, the smile a little wider as he took his first bite. Life flooded back into him in a rush as he gestured.

"This," he said, waving his fork, "_this_ is good pie. It's _lemon_. You expect lemon to be tart, but it's not and this? This is still warm, Reese. Try it, c'mon, you gotta tr--" With an amused twist of her lips, she very carefully dissected a piece (a perfect square just the size of her small dessert fork) and let it sit on her tongue for a moment (there was a touch of powdered sugar, flaky, buttery crust) and he was right. It was tart-sweet and about melted in her mouth as the crust crumbled.

"S'mazing," she mumbled around a mouthful of pie before licking her lips.

Crews gestured again and a second piece found its way in front of her. She was going to regret this bullshit after a day that should have consisted of garden salads and yogurt. God. The _case_, they had a case, and here they were gawping over lemon fucking _pie_. She flipped the page and blinked.

Five years before his arrest, William Blank had killed twenty-nine prosties and junkies. Number thirty got away and lead six police officers back to Blank. All six died before SWAT got there. She read each name, her lips moving around the words in silence. Ballantine's father, Jonathan, was among the dead, right along with Kendall Wright who'd been a close friend of Jack's. Rayborn, too, she supposed. Familiar names cropping up in a familiar world of bright red violence, hedged in by the blue and gold. Reese dug out the letter, smoothed the thick pages out.

_When Blank disappeared without a trace, I knew something had to have gone down. The warden ignored me beforehand, figuring his guys had it in hand, but I knew they were wrong. In a world where death threats are as common as staph infections (which are far more common than you'd think), they had to be in on it. That's the only way it would work. Guards can't love their jobs, they can't, at least most of the ones I know don't. You lend yourself to the constant sway of being a dickhead, of becoming violent, of succumbing to beating the fuck out of these prisoners, these hard, embittered, inmates who if they aren't screwed up from the shit they've done are screwed the fuck up because of the shit they've gone through inside these walls. It isn't sweet and light and fluffy in there, it's violent, ranked, and brutal. They have a pecking order, a system. The biggest motherfucker is the King in the Kingdom of the Condemned._

_You want to know about it, you ask your partner, if he'll tell you. Jesus H., Reese. I don't even want to know what twelve years in this goddamn hellhole did to him or how he survived it. I should get to the point, right? I don't think I have much time anymore to essay on prison, violence, and the transformation of moral psyche on Man Imprisoned. I'm sure you'll be pretty damn relieved, sitting there, reading this shit. I'm not writing to chat, though. I'm writing because I am goddamn sure someone arranged to have William Blank moved-- probably for his parole hearing in front of the Board again (he was a Lifer, sure, but he requested a hearing every year like clockwork)--and then took him for a little ride. That ride, I suspect, took them out of state where Blank was then murdered by guards who are dead now. April 12, 2005, Blank went missing. Just dropped out of the system and off the face of the earth. I got nothing. No transfer papers, no line of custody. Nothing. Joe Blank, Joseph, put in a few very, very angry inquiries, but no one really got back to him. I saw him in town a few Sundays ago. He said he was watching me, you know, all 'eyes on you' bullshit. I told him I was looking into the matter, but the hell if he believed me._

_You'll find the tapes of use, I hope. I'm just afraid they're no good. I sorta fucked up. I mean, here I am, already catching heat for investigating what's supposed to be an internal Corrections matter, and I'm prodding guards? Yeah. Uncool. The whole department thinks I need a six month vacation in the looney bin. Sound familiar?_

Reese half smiled. Yeah, that sounded pretty fucking familiar after the ribbing she'd gotten when Crews was assigned to her. No good ex-junkie-fuck-up and Crews, the exonerated crazyass oh-look-I'm-a-detective-now. Uh huh. She scanned the page and moved to turn it when Crews's fingers curled around her wrist. He tapped a line.

_He said he was watching me, you know, all 'eyes on you' bullshit._

His fingers brushed down a few paragraphs.

_Someone's been leaving dead animals in my mailbox again and I've had more letters and email from some anonymous hacker-stalker-type in the last six months than I have in my whole career. Even after the fuck up in Narcotics. This is scary motherfucking shit, Reese, and I don't think I'm going to live through this one. Guess my number's about up. Feels like that night when Los Malos Lobos were set outside our door and all we could do was pray to God they wouldn't bust in and kill us right there. You remember that shit? That's how unbelievable this is, only I got no back up. I got nothing but you and the knowledge that if I wind up dead somewhere, I know you'll follow this through._

Her throat tightened.

"Jesus, Pat," she whispered and let Crews's warm fingers stay against her suddenly ice-cold wrist. He'd known he was going to die. Hell, he'd known it so well, he'd taken the time to write up a Plan fucking B.

_Look up Jeffrey Callum. I found tapes, those tapes you have in your pocket or stashed away, I found them in his truck. He was going to blackmail the other guard about Blank's murder. I have them __on record__, saying they killed him in Nevada. I was going to go there, maybe with you, find his body, get an indictment--something--but I don't even have enough time to do that. I know Joe has someone watching me and I know there's someone else watching __him__. Logs mention Jack Reese visited Blank in 2005, shortly before he went missing. A Victor Nabbas visited after that, about three days later. Shit went down after that and Nabbas disappeared. I can't get a hit on that bastard at all, but I've included a few camera shots so you can run his face, maybe. I suppose if you're reading this and not talking to me, I'm dead._

_Doesn't that shit suck hard? Dani, you be careful. Don't you end up dead, you hear me? And Crews, do what you're good at. Find the asshole who was tailing me, then find the nutjob tailing __him__. That's all I got for you guys. Funny, isn't it? I was so goddamned close._

She felt Crews's thumb brush across her wrist bone as she bit her lip and shook her head. The movement sent a few hot tears splattering against the lined pages. Reese murmured a soft _fuck_ and wiped at her face, torn between anger and sorrow all at once. Her phone buzzed a second later and she glanced at Crews. His face was unreadable, closed off, the earlier sparkle gone, and his thumb was still working against her wrist as she looked at the text message.

"We got a hit on the car," she said. "It's sitting at a Motel 6 not far from us. We also have a name. Robert Fendine."

Crews nodded.

"Hey," Reese said gently, her hand closing over his. "You with me? Because I need you _here_."

"I'm with you," he said in a soft sort of voice. His eyes locked with hers and she saw some of the tension ebb. "Robert Fendine. Motel 6. I'm here, Reese. I'm still here."


	5. Circles

The kid running the night desk at the Motel 6 was edgy. A little stoned. Crews could smell it from the door, but smiled. His name tag was crooked, hair tousled and a little greasy. He was scrawny, starving for something more, something he couldn't find. It wouldn't be in drugs. _Benny_. Benjamin, probably. Reese was pissed off, he could hear the edge in her voice as she leaned in and extracted the room number by exploiting the one word that kid didn't want to hear.

_Weed_.

She moved like a shark, direct for the kill, and he moved with her with a wink at the kid, who looked suitably chastised. Not appropriately sorry, though. Reese was pissed about that, too. Her fist hit door 109 hard enough to rattle it.

"Robert Fendine, LAPD. Open up," she snapped.

There was a muffled response, then another. She waited, almost jiggling as the chain finally came off the door. Crews wanted to tell her he wasn't going to bolt and watched her fingers brush her gun. Reese wanted a fight, but she wasn't going to get it here. The door opened awkwardly, bumped against rubber wheels. This wasn't their killer. He could tell from the atrophy in Fendine's legs and watched Reese's lips tighten. She knew it, too.

Fendine peered up at them.

"You're late," he said and wheeled back so they could come in. Reese scowled and nudged a can of Sprite with the toe of her boot and she holstered her gun with a hard look at Fendine. "Not much space to sit." He gestured and worked his way up onto the bed.

"That's okay," Reese said, "we're not staying for the pajama party."

"We caught you running a red right outside of a crime scene," Crews said, more curious than anything. "A homicide, actually. Cop got killed, Patrick Ballantine. What my partner and I would like to know is what you were doing there."

"I'm a P.I.," Fendine drawled, gesturing at his wallet. Reese kept her eyes on the man. "Retired Denver PD." One of his arms hung limply at his side as he finished pulling himself back onto the bed. "I was hired to track Ballantine, not to kill him. My ride was trashed by a buncha punks up in Eureka. Didn't have much of a choice when Ballantine was booking it down here like he had demons up his ass. The guy that pieca shit car," Crews's eyebrows arched slight, "belongs to woulda got it back. I left the fucker $500, with a note, too." Fendine frowned and tugged on a pair of latex gloves.

"So, I tail this Ballantine guy in to L.A., and he's running scared as fuck, right?" Fendine shoved a few pillows behind him. "Then he stops and goes into your building. I'm sitting there for like...three hours. The guy never comes out. Some other bastard comes ripping out of there, shoving something in a bag, looking damn hungry. He's got a hoodie on, pulled up, but I can tell he's blond. Fit, too, maybe about six-one, six-two. On the thin side, but wiry. Like you, Detective Crews, but a little more meat. No prison-hunger on him."

Fendine sidled a glance at Crews.

"Best I can do on an ident."

This guy? He had _asshole_ written all over him and Crews didn't like him. Not when he was digging at sore spots. _Prison-hunger_ got a sharp look that said Fendine ought to watch himself. He had a feeling Reese was glaring daggers, too, as she flipped through the man's wallet to confirm his P.I. story. Crews did his best not to rise to the bait and threw a small, tight, grimace in another direction. No sleep was making it harder to resist that urge to tell Fendine to, as Reese might put it, _cram it_.

"Who hired you to tail Ballantine?" Crews asked, his voice clipped and professional.

"You know the answer to that, Detective," Fendine said with a sharp smile.

"Joseph Blank," Reese said in a soft voice and he watched the way her eyes settled on the man. The anger was there, bubbling, because as Fendine had sat in his stolen car, a former partner of hers had been _murdered_. Fendine didn't deny it, but he didn't really confirm it, either.

"Three more questions," Crews said. Fendine nodded, waiting. "How long was it after Ballantine went in before that blond man came out? Do you know anything about a William Blank?" He was too tired to do much more than ask pointed, quick questions, and Reese was too tired to interject. She also had a headache if the way she was half squinting told it right.

"It was about thirty minutes, maybe forty-five, give or take," Fendine said, then blinked. "Blank? Sure. I remember a Blank. He was that murderer what killed all those girls and the cops. Piece of work. Ballantine was raising some fuss about him going missing. Threatened to got to the FBI with some heavy evidence. He had IAD up his ass pretty hard. Him and Blank. That was just getting interesting. All sorts of threats coming down. Couldn't figure out from who, though. I watched him damn good, too, didn't see jack."

Reese sat on the edge of the table, quiet, listening, absorbing the information like a sponge. She didn't feel like talking anymore, instead, she remained cool and silently menacing, as if that would help. Her phone buzzed and she glanced at it, then frowned.

Tidwell.

The annoyance in her face said as much as she arched a brow and gestured. Crews offered her a smile and nodded before turning his attention back to Fendine. He could hear her voice, muffled as she talked, and heard the whoosh of cars passing by on the street.

"Did you ever come across the name of Tomas Harriman in connection with Ballantine?" It was worth a shot. Definitely worth a shot. Crews took out an apple (a Pink Lady, which was actually pinkish, though there were some bits of green) and took a bite.

"Harriman? Once or twice, nothing specific," Fendine said. "There was some sort of vague connection between the two. Ballantine met with someone who knew someone who knew Harriman. He was trying to dig more information up on the man. To my knowledge, he kept hitting walls. There were alotta those. Dummy corporations, legit inside legit, names and numbers that didn't follow through."

He glanced at the door Reese had gone through.

"She tell you about Ballantine, yet?" he asked. "Seems like she's taking it pretty hard." He flashed a smile that was neither pleasant nor reassuring. Fendine had been places after his stint with the PD and they weren't exactly nice. The ooze of it leaked around him, like a blurring outline of something wrong.

Crews frowned, eying Fendine with something that could only be called disgust (as soon as he got away from here, the first thing he'd do was wash his hands, though a shower might be in order). The guy oozed weird right alongside not being particularly helpful. There was more buried somewhere and it was prickling at him like an itch he couldn't quite reach.

He glanced at the man, his face unreadable.

"April 12, 2003," Fendine said. "Undercover, seedy motel, the kind where you're not even sure if those damn sheets were changed." There was a gleam of a smile again that never really surfaced, not really. "How did that mobster put it? Did he say Little Dani Reese, maybe? She and Ballantine got themselves locked in thanks to some particularly nasty situation. From what I can tell, thin walls were interesting that night. Had a guy tell me some _fascinating_ things."

Charlie Crews's face mirrored Fendine's smile, only his was sharper, darker. Thin ice wasn't a phrase good enough for what Fendine was walking. The implications the man was getting at weren't exactly made of gold and his attitude was acidic now that Reese was out of the room. Crews didn't like it. He didn't like it _at all_. Her blinked slowly, the curl of his lips slight and disgusted. He fixed his eyes on Fendine's and the cop receded just enough.

"If you have something to say about my partner," he began, his voice smooth and light, "I'd love to hear it. I would." His fingers tightened against the apple. "But before you do, Mr. Fendine, I think you ought to know that I don't like to play games with men like you. Wrap it up or you're going to find out that the woman out there?"

He jerked a thumb at the door, his smile a little wider.

"She's not the bad cop."

"Maybe you ought to ask _her_ what went down," Fendine hummed, his laugh light. "I bet that'd be an interesting conversation." From the cracked door, Reese's voice was waspish, sharp and agitated before it abruptly cut off. Her fist hit the door.

"Crews," she called. "Tell Chatty Cathy to shut up if he's not giving you anything useful. Shit's in from CSU." She poked her head in, scowling. "And you, don't go anywhere or I'll hunt your ass down, wheelchair or not."

Fendine shot her a brilliant smile.

Reese looked like she wanted to shoot him. He wouldn't have minded, save for the fact that it would give them both way too much paperwork to do and Tidwell would suspend her. Crews took another bite from his apple, his free fingers squeezing into a tight fist. The relief that came with leaving Robert Fendine behind was welcome. He left the door wide open, too, and heard the man cuss after them.

"Fendine's an _asshole_," she muttered as she pulled the driver's side door open.

"Yes," Crews said in a soft, smooth voice, "Yes he is."


	6. High Tide

Reese nudged the coffee pot as she watched the last of it drip into place. From clear across the squad room, she could hear Bobby ribbing Juarez about some bust while Juarez headed off to the locker room to change out of some seriously reeking clothes. She glanced up as Bobby swaggered over, grinning as he waited for her to grab a cup.

"Juarez got whizzed on," he said, jerking his thumb after his disappearing partner. "We stop this guy, right? And he's like taking it out in front of _Our Lady of the Angels_, hollering about how God hates the world. So, sure, we get the call cuz he's bitchin and moaning and carrying on about how the Catholic Church is motherfuckin' evil or some dumb as shit junk. Juarez walks up to him and asks him to knock it off. I'll be fuckin damned if that asshole didn't piss all over Juarez's pants. An then? An then he said, 'Bless you my child,' calm as could be and let me cuff him. Fuckin wacko nutjob."

Reese blinked at Bobby for a long moment and then slowly, carefully, poured herself a cup of coffee, glanced at Crews, and made him a cup of ginger-peach tea. Because she could.

"What?" Bobby asked, shit-eating grin still in full force. "Juarez will be showering for a month."

"Bobby," Reese said quietly, glancing at the clock. It was now three in the morning. "I had a dead detective in my apartment. One of my friends. Juarez getting whizzed on? That's not gonna help right now."

She had to admit, it _might_ have been amusing another time.

Reese set the tea down precisely in the spot Crews always seemed to put it and sank into her chair, staring at the forensics report that lay messily across her desk. Rubbing at the bridge of her nose wasn't helping the headache that had crawled into her skull. She rolled her head to glance at Bobby, who looked like she'd just kicked the fun right out of his evening and hung there for awhile before turning to get his own cup of coffee.

Crews blinked at the tea like he wasn't sure it was really there, his eyes just a little glazed before he blinked again and really saw it. He peered at her for a moment as if to say '_Did you just get me tea?_' Reese said nothing, but arched both eyebrows and watched him take a surprised sip.

"Thanks," he said, a slight smile tugging at the corners of his lips. Guess she could still surprise him, that was good to know. Reese could see he was tired, probably just as tired as she was, and that all the angles of this case were screwing with him like they were her.

Juarez popped his head back into the room and gave Bobby a look, to which he winked, and charged off. Reese barely noticed as she sipped her coffee, silent, save for the soft '_welcome_' Crews got as she nudged papers around. She frowned as her fingers touched the two tapes that were half hidden under the papers. Forensics had gone over them and they had transcripts along with files on the guards. One was missing, the other was dead, hung himself in his closet. Reese stared at the notes she'd scribbled for a long moment, gulped back another long swallow of coffee and leaned back into her chair, scratching at her neck for a moment.

"Missing people. _Dead _people. Death threats on a police detective. Dead police detective. Dead police detective in _my_ apartment." Reese didn't have the energy to frown. "The coke in his pockets? That had to have been planted. Pat never touched that shit and IAD can kiss my ass if they want to say otherwise." They'd try to pin the coke on her or something because she'd been fucked up before. Fuck IAD, they were a bunch of bastards, anyway. "Whoever killed him was to hide what really went down. Dunno about the dog hair. Maybe Fendine's."

She was talking just to talk, following the case as she read the transcript.

"There's alotta money being thrown around here," she murmured, reaching for the phone and dialing. Reese left four messages to get the money tracked and hung up, annoyed. "Ted's good with money, right?" she asked, letting her forehead fall against her folders, her voice muffled. "I remember you saying he was good with money. He good at tracking it? It'll take the finance wizards days to get that shit done."

Jesus Christ, she was tired. Breathing seemed a chore after this fucked up day and Reese forced herself upright to gulp down her coffee before she shoved herself out of her chair for another cup. She was working on cup five, now, and ignoring her body as best as she could. They had a guard, a dead one, confessing to the murder and dumping of William Blank.

But who the _fuck_ had killed Ballantine?

"Ted's good with money," Crews said quietly. She knew he'd ask Ted to track the money later. "You put the request in?" She shrugged, as good of a _yes_ as he was going to get. He was silent for awhile, his eyes following her as she poured two packets of sugar into her cup and loaded it up with milk. The day, morning, whatever it was, wasn't getting any _better_.

"Reese?" Her eyes met his as she stirred her coffee. "Do you know who Tomas Harriman is?"

"Cop," she said, setting the freshly filled mug down to scrub her palms against her eyes in a fit of frustration. "Think Jack knew him way back when. He used to work Narcotics, retired just before I started working plain clothes. Jack used to mention him. I mean, not often, but every once and awhile I'd hear the name. I heard he moved overseas somewhere after he retired. Why, you think Harriman's really connected tight to this Ballantine bullshit?"

"Maybe," Crews said, sounding distant as he took another slow swallow of tea. She watched him out of the corner of her eye and saw him lean back to stare up at the ceiling as if the answers were going to come raining down on him. She wished they would. "Could we, maybe, track him? See if he came back?"

"Sure," she said, pulling a face as she punched Harriman's name into the database. "He could have come and gone any number of times." She squinted at the screen and sighed, pushing herself away with a soft curse. "Oh come _on_, gimme a damn break." Her eyes met his and she sighed. "The damn thing is eyes only. I'm not even sure Tidwell could get us into this. All I got is basic access, Crews."

"Huh," he said softly.

"I might be able to get ahold of the hardcopy," she said after a moment, washing down the flare of irritation with a stinging gulp of coffee. "He could be former IAD. That's usually departmentally restricted." Reese was grasping at straws, trying to jam sense into places there wasn't any. "Maybe FBI." That made her wince. "I know he worked Narcotics for twenty plus, was highly decorated, and lost his wife a year before he retired. There's nothing here, Crews. Nothing."

She shook her head lightly.

"Whatever this is, it's screwed up."

Reese watched his lips twist in a quirk of a smile, the laugh soft and soundless as he stretched. Nothing from Cox and Pendle who were working their own angle. God, it seemed like everything in the damn case brought them around to where they were before. Zero, nada, zlich.

"You should sleep," Crews said. "I think you should sleep. Just a little."

"Yeah? Well, I think I should get some No-Doze." She was starting to fray, she could feel it and damn him, he could see it. "Maybe they cleared my place, maybe I go home with you, but I'm not gonna sleep. I'm gonna sit there, on my ass, thinking about this _shit_, Crews. And I'm gonna keep thinking about it. Ballantine _trained_ me. It stays with you, y'know? He trained me and now he's dead and I'm _pissed_."

"I know," Crews said. "Right now, no one is more angry than you are. I know that. But Reese, you gotta step back. You know it, I know it. Take a few hours, sleep, don't sleep, whatever it takes. You step back and you breathe."

"I'd vote for sleep, myself." Tidwell's voice came out of nowhere and Reese tried not to jump out of her skin. _Jesus H._, where the hell had he come from? "It's late. Go home. Don't make me order you."

Reese frowned pointedly.

"Detective Crews has a point. You start starin at this crap for this long, you start to see things that aren't there. Maybe they get all screwed up in your head, too. Get some rest. I got guys workin on it. This guy was a cop, we'll do right by him."

She opened her mouth to argue and watched Crews start cleaning his desk.

"Uhn uh," Tidwell said, silencing her before she could say anything. "Get out of my station." He jerked his thumb towards the elevator. "You come back after eight hours, we get back to business. In the meantime, maybe we'll get some hard evidence on that crossbow or the couch or maybe on Ballantine." He caught her eyes as she stacked files into her briefcase. "Hey. I know you and that cop were pretty tight. We'll get something."

"Fine," she snapped, then, with less force as she raised her hands, "...I'm going. "

"You," Tidwell said, stabbing a finger at Crews. "Get her to sleep." Crews blinked and finished his tea. He gave the man a pointed look and the Captain grimaced. "_Try_."

Reese shot Tidwell a dirty look and headed toward the elevators, her briefcase in hand, full of files and niggling facts. Crews caught up to her in the parking garage, his jacket slung over his arm., slightly out of breath.

"Crews," she said listlessly.

"Reese?" he asked, sidling a glance her way as he walked beside her.

"Drive." She flicked the keys at him and heard him sigh. "No, I'm not."

"You're not what?" Reese kept walking, blinking to keep herself in check, to keep it all in. She couldn't crack. Not now. Not fucking now. "_Reese_," he murmured. Not here. All she had to do was keep moving and she'd make it just fine. Crews was still talking, but she blanked him out until his voice was a hum. Reese blinked again and she was opening the door to his car, buckling up, and Crews was still talking.

He talked the whole way there, various notes of concern threading the smoothness of his voice, but he didn't say it was going to be okay. Crews knew it wasn't and it wouldn't _ever_ be okay. He knew that because he _knew it_. And all she could see was Ballantine's face, dead, on her couch.

He'd come to _her_ for help and she hadn't been there. Her fingers curled around the edge of the seat as the crunch of gravel sounded beneath the tires. Reese didn't wait until Crews stopped the car and flung the door open before stumbling out and toward the house. She had to move, to keep moving. Her briefcase found the kitchen counter and she felt Ted tentatively touch her shoulder before she wheeled away and lurched up the stairs.

Crews's voice called after her, Ted's again, soft and slightly confused. Everywhere she went it seemed like people _died_ around her. Drugs and murder and darkness and corruption, all of it sucking people down and away from her. All of it wrong and broken and horrible and just _too_ much. Fingers caught her elbows and she half wrenched away, then paused.

"Hey." Charlie's voice was soft, softer than she'd ever heard it. "_Hey_. You're not alone in this. I got you."

"I want a drink," she whispered. "Jesus, I want one."

"I know you do," he said, his arms encircling her waist, careful, gentle. "But you don't need one." She was silent, her breath ragged. "You know why you don't need one?"

Reese shuddered, her fingers tight around his arm as his lips brushed her ear.

"You don't need one because you're stronger than anyone has a right to be. You're stronger than the drink, you're stronger than the drugs, and you're stronger than anyone I have ever known. That's why." She hung there, her back pressed up against him, bottled up so goddamn tight she thought she was going to shatter. "Dani," he said quietly. "You don't need one."

She'd survived Roman, her father, she'd survived an fucked up overdose. She'd survived everything that had told her _die, die die_. She'd done that.

"Don't let go," she whispered, her fingers sinking against his arm.

"I'll never let go," he hummed, walking them into the bedroom. "Not ever. Not even if Tidwell orders me to. I told you I wouldn't let you fall, didn't I?" She made a soft noise, letting her head loll against his shoulder.

"Never's a long time, Charlie." His lips brushed against her temple. "That's a long, long time."

"I got time," he said and she felt his smile glance off her forehead as the moonlight turned their skin silvery pale. Reese murmured his name again and pulled away, her fingers on his lips.

"There's never enough time," she said.

"There's now," Charlie said, smiling around her fingers. "We have now."

"We have now," Reese echoed. Like the moonlight, the silence pooled around them, letting them list against each other like broken battleships on a calm harbor. Tomorrow was going to be a hurricane.


	7. Hurricane

He woke to the scratch of pen against paper and the sight of bare curves; the way her shoulder blade shone in the early morning light, the wash of pale gold against her hip and thigh, the tangled curl of hair that lay against her cheek. Charlie was still, his face half in the light as he watched her pen come down, scribbling furiously, working because sleeping was impossible. She licked her lips, brow furrowed, as sunlight glinted through the large windows that let in Southern California light mixed with soft Southern California wind.

It washed through the room and raised goosebumps across her skin.

"We're working two cases," she said, rubbing a hand through her hair wearily. He heard the way she half sighed and smoothed his fingertips against her side, watching the light play against her skin as it broke through his fingers. Two cases. Ballantine and Blank, intertwined, with Tomas Harriman twisted into it, the dark red line that pulled at the threads of some invisible tapestry. _Cop_, Reese had said. A cop connected to Jack who was connected to Rayborn. _Rayborn_ who was connected to _him_. "Two cases, Crews." _Charlie_. It was there, that note in her voice, but she was working the case. Not a shred of clothes on her and she was working the case, already switched over to _Crews_. It made him smile just a little.

"Two cases," he murmured. Charlie shifted, half curling around her to peer at her notes. There were doodles in the corners where she'd been thinking on paper, sketches here and there, and timelines, lists, evidence, theories. A list of potential suspects as well, people who could have seen something. He knew where she wanted to go, now, and it left him cold inside. He buried his lips just below her ear and felt her lean into him, her breath caught. "You want to go up to Crescent City."

"You don't have to come," Reese said, her voice quiet. "You don't have to go back there. I got people I need to talk to. Guards, the warden, the last people who saw him alive. I gotta know where he came from, what his moves were, what he was really thinking. You don't ha--"

He leaned and kissed her carefully, firmly, felt her stir.

"I'm coming with you," he said, detached, now, trying to keep it all at bay. Charlie could feel it, the sound of the prison doors rattling closed, the hum of the flickering florescent lights, the quiet of the yard when he was in solitary, the way that prison tee felt soaked with blood. His blood, theirs, twelve years of fight and Zen survival. He breathed in and relaxed as her palm cupped his cheek. He was sure and she saw it.

"I called the trip in," she said softly. "Tidwell was annoyed, but cleared it with Crescent City PD fifteen minutes ago. Texted the go-ahead." Her lips pursed wryly. "Get your pants on, Crews. It's a long, long drive." She pulled away and he drank in the sight of her as she moved across the room to pull on some clothes. He dressed quickly, packed a bag, made coffee. Ted sat downstairs half asleep with a sheaf of papers printed out for them.

"Charlie," he mumbled. "Your private investigator was definitely working for Joseph Blank and Blank had been paid by some corporation that was a shell for another shell for _another_ shell that went on back threw a few more corporations and landed me, after far too long, at a Swiss bank account. That account is owned by a man named Victor Nabbas. He's a lawyer. He's a lawyer who works for Tomas Harriman."

Crews blinked and Ted grinned as Reese skirted past to grab a cup of coffee.

"Victor Nabbas bought a plane ticket from Switzerland, routed through Heathrow, to New York City. He never arrived. I found a smaller outgoing plane chartered to LAX that arrived and there was a twenty grand wire transfer to the owner of that plane. No flight list, private. I did some calling. Victor Nabbas is blond, over six feet, and thin. he would have arrived the day your cop friend was murdered."

Reese stopped midsip and stared at Ted for a very, very long time as Crews stood there, grinning.

"What?" Ted asked a little nervously and his eyes went wide. "I followed the money."

"Ted," Reese said, letting him have one of her rare genuine smiles, "I owe you _huge_. C'mon Crews, if we're gonna make it upstate, we need to book it." He flicked a glance at her and offered Ted a quick flash of a smile. Ted returned it and scotted his own cup of coffee closer, waving at them.

"Hope you catch this guy," he called after them.

"We will," Reese said firmly.

He hoped so. There was something off about the blond guy, though. Something that told him they needed to be very, very careful, and that whatever was in Crescent City, it wasn't going to be pleasant -- his issues aside. His gut said _hurry, Charlie_. They were going to need something faster than his car.

"Reese?" Crews said, "Reese, wait. Head to the airport." She blinked, throwing the idea around for a second and then nodded. "The faster we get up to Crescent City, the better."

"Department's not gonna like a charter plane," she muttered as she pulled her door shut, the dark cranberry of her shirt flashing warm in the weak light that filtered through the clouds. He arched his eyebrows at her meaningfully and buckled up. "Oh. You're just going to..." Reese waved, "just like that? Boom, plane tickets?"

"I have money," he reminded her quietly. "What good is it if I can't use it for things like this?"

"Point," she said. "Do I get more coffee?"

"There's a Starbucks at LAX," he said, smiling. "I'm sure we can spare a moment. Lemme just snag that flight." Crews watched her process how _easy_ it was to do this. Normally, he'd have Ted do it, but Ted had done entirely too much for them at the moment and he was afraid the man was going to fall asleep at the counter if he asked anymore. So. Crews started dialing. Fifteen minutes later, they had a direct private flight into Del Norte County Airport out of LAX. They left Crews's car in Daily Parking and walked into the airport, stopping only briefly for heavily doctored coffee. They were met at the tarmac by a flight attendant named William who got them settled on Skylark, an executive jet that shone sleek black and glinting as the sun rose.

Reese cradled her coffee almost possessively and refused to give up her bag. The hatch closed behind them, leaving them staring at huge, plush, oversized chairs done in pristine ivory. One of the chairs rocked and turned before a very familiar face swung into view.

"Hello kiddo, have a seat. It's going to be a real nice flight." Rayborn grinned and Crews felt Reese stiffen beside him. "I thought you might like some company."

"Rayborn," Crews said right on top of Reese's hissed '_What_ _the _hell_?'_

"My plane. I get to stay," Rayborn said smoothly, his smile still bright and unwavering. "You see, I own Skylark, much like I own many, many things. More things than you probably think I own. Take a seat, we're about to taxi. Dani, nice to see you looking so well." He folded his hands, his face smooth and calculating and so very _Mickey Rayborn_ as he waited. Reese, predictably, scowled.

"I was pretty sure you were fairly well occupied," Crews said, sinking into a seat and buckling in. Reese did the same, grudgingly.

"Oh, you know," Rayborn said, sipping a cup of what smelled like mint tea. "Sometimes things aren't as complicated as they seem. I have a good lawyer, good money. Good people."

"What do you want, Mickey?" Reese said in a low, hard voice.

"I'd really like to know what your interest in Tomas Harriman is," he said, his smile as tight as the look in his eyes. _Dangerous ground_, Crews thought, though the quick, polite smile directed at Rayborn was genial enough. "Yes, I know you tried to access his file and failed. He's a decent man and he _was_ a decent cop. You would have gotten along well with him, Dani."

"I'm not crooked," she said very, very quietly.

"Now, now," Rayborn murmured. "Let's not go pointing fingers when there aren't any facts to establish any wrongdoing. What would your father say to such shoddy police work?"

"Jack," Reese said, her voice dropping to a dangerous growl, "is dead. _Jack_ is dead because your Russian monster murdered him." Her eyes said more, they always did, even when she was shut up tight. He saw the pain flash through her features and forced himself not to move.

Mickey Rayborn leaned forward with a soft sigh, his elbows on his knees as he watched Reese glower at him. Crisp white shirt, dark suit, polished shoes with rubber soles, and a new addition, a deep burled wood cane. He canted his head slightly, peering from Crews to Reese and back again, thoughtful, analytical, then folded his hands.

"You father chose his own path," Rayborn said softly. "He had every means necessary to avoid his fate and, in the end, he walked straight into it anyway. There's only so much you can give a man before you can't give him any more." A smile tugged at Mickey's lips, one that was not particularly nice. "Roman told you he was dead, right?" She nodded just once, the motion more of a jerk than a nod. "Did it make you sad?"

"No," Reese said, her face hard, closed down, and her eyes glittering with held anger.

"No?" Rayborn's eyebrows arched. "Jack might be a little hurt by that statement. His own flesh and blood denying him mourning like that. Your mother was sad, though, wasn't she? I think she's been sad for a long while about that. Even after everything, all of those years, everything he'd done, your mother still loved him. Jack Reese was a hard man, a man who had heavy issues to deal with. You know that and, from what I gather, you know _why_." The plane gathered speed on the runway, pressed their bodies back into the soft seats, and shot them toward the sky. Crews watched Rayborn the way he watched a perp, waiting for his moment. There was always a moment.

Reese shifted, her jaw tight.

"I'm not going to talk about that," she said very quietly. "Tomas. Harriman. Where is he and what does he have to do with William Blank?"

"William Blank," Rayborn said, a slim smile lingering across his features, "was an escaped convict who murdered twenty nine women and six good cops. Tomas Harriman was a good friend of mine who lost a partner and a brother in that incident. Nothing more. Last I talked to him, he had no clue Blank had escaped."

"William Blank was murdered," Reese said. Her voice was dry, calm, and focused. "Two Correction guards, Anthony Raine and Donald Pullard were taped confessing to the murders. One died, the other went missing and is presumed dead. Three million dollars is in limbo as well. One more man, by the name of Jeff Callum, also a Corrections officer, is dead as well, though he appears to have committed suicide by hanging himself his closet. I have _another_ dead cop related to the Blank case as well. His name is Patrick Ballantine. Someone killed him in my livingroom and Ballantine left me a note mentioning Tomas Harriman. Specifically that Tomas Harriman's men were coming for him. He came to _me_ and he died before I could do a goddamn thing to help him. I got alotta dead bodies that are pissing me off pretty badly right now. And I want the man who killed Ballantine. I _want_ Victor Nabbas."

"Going to Crescent City is going to put you both in jeopardy," Rayborn murmured, carefully stretching out.

"Why would that be?" Crews asked, glancing out the window.

"Kiddo, you don't want to walk this road." He held up a hand. "You walk this and people might keep dying. I can't make it all go away if you go hunting for Nabbas. He doesn't take kindly to being hunted down."

"I don't take kindly to people killing my goddamn friends," Reese snapped, at the end of her patience. "And I really, really don't take kindly to you fucking with me like I'm some sort of--"

"That's enough," Rayborn said, cutting Reese off with a sharp gesture. "I always liked you, Dani. Always. You did everything you could to survive, even after Roman. You had real spirit, serious guts, incredible cop instinct, still do, and I do admire that. But sometimes, complicated things go wrong and good people go down in the process. You're smart and you know that. Listen to your head, Dani. I don't know anything about Blank or the trouble he found himself in, but if Victor Nabbas is involved, I'd walk the other way. He's very, very good at what he does."

"What does he do, Mickey?" Reese hissed. "You wanna maybe enlighten me?"

"Victor is a watchdog," Rayborn said, closing his eyes as he leaned back. "He's a watchdog that will bite you in half and I'd hate to see Jack Reese's only kid get caught between that man's teeth. I'm here because I don't want to see either of you dead."

"Bullshit," Reese growled.

"I'm not the only one," Rayborn said, his smile a little wider. Silence settled for a long while until the landing gear went down in a whine of hydraulics. Crews glanced at his watch and grimaced. They'd been traveling fast to make it to Crecent City in just under two hours. Once they were taxied and still, Crews rose. The silence hung thick.

"We're going to get off the plane," Crews said quietly, "and we're going to find Victor Nabbas through every single connection he has, and then we're going to trace those back to Tomas Harriman and bring him down as well."

"C'mon, kiddo," Rayborn said. "It's not worth dying over. Going after Harriman will get you killed. I wouldn't be on this plane if I didn't think it was a possibility."

"Don't," Crews said, his voice flat, "call me _kiddo_. And no one is going to die."

Rayborn just sighed.

"Kids, you say don't do it and they do it anyway," he muttered. "Fine, but watch your back. And remember the lessons you've learned. They might save your life. Always protect your back, kiddo. Always."

Crews fixed Rayborn with a hard stare and then shared a look with Reese, who grimaced.

Crescent City smelled woodsy, like perpetual rainfall. It hit him when the hatch opened, pouring memory back over him like a downpour. Salt air and earth, the thick scent of redwood trees (rotting, caving in, and old), the humidity, the way a storm seemed forever threatening. He looked up to find the sun, but it was gone, lost in the clouds that were quickly thickening. He didn't bother to say goodbye to Rayborn, just turned and walked after Reese who was already heading into the airport to secure a rental car or a taxi. Something useful.

They'd find Nabbas. They'd find him and bring him home before Crescent City ate him alive again. They'd do that because they _could_ and because Ballantine had asked them to do so.

He felt flat, now, flatter than he had with Rayborn, like he was being compressed into a thin line. The dull murkiness that was Crescent City felt manufactured and fake, right along with the heavy wind that blew by, sending a fresh wave of wrongness through his bones. Crews suppressed a shudder. He should never have come back. Not ever. This was a place of death and pain and shivs.

"Hey." Reese voice caught his ear and turned him away from those thoughts long enough for him to see she was holding keys. "I got keys to a Ford Taurus. It's beige, I think." They walked in silence to the parking lot and she pressed the alarm, probably to be obnoxious. He couldn't help but smile as she silenced the wailing and popped the trunk. "I got Pat's keys," Reese said. "Figured he wouldn't mind if we saved some money and crashed at his place. I always found it weird that he moved into some family sized home when it was just him."

"Maybe he was hoping for a family one day," Crews offered. It didn't sound right, not even to him, and he shrugged when her eyes caught his. She drove them into a circular driveway and parked in front of the long porch that went around the front of the house. A dead man's house. "Reese?"

"Yeah?" she got out and grabbed the bags, frowning as she unlocked the door.

"What went down in that motel?" He followed her in and watched the way her body stiffened. "You and Ballantine, the gang?"

"Shit got tense Crews," she said, still stiff. "We were locked in the walk-in closet for ten hours. Him and me and Hell outside. We got stupid, thinking we weren't gonna make it, that SWAT was gonna be late. I fucked him, okay? It was just once. He transferred, we didn't really talk. He blamed himself and I was just screwed up. That's all. We thought we were gonna die right there." She tossed the bags on the crappy couch and leaned against the back of it. "You maybe thinking he made me into a junkie?"

"No," Crews said, his shrug light. "Fendine was spouting shit, that's all." Old shit that meant nothing. It also meant Fendine was just trying to make trouble. The thing about Charlie Crews was, he didn't care about that. All that mattered was _now_. Fendine would never get that, not the way Reese did.

"Fendine's an asshole with his panties up his--" She stopped. He glanced up at her sharply and found her staring out the back window, squinting at the woods.

"The fuck is that?" Reese murmured. Crews moved up next to her, peering along her line of sight. Leaves rustled in the rising wind and he could feel the fine hairs on the back of his neck rise with it. There was someone out there. Reese drew her gun and unlocked the deck door, the hinges squeaking as she darted through it.

"Reese," he called after her, cursing softly under his breath.

He heard her nine millimeter go off twice and then there was silence.

"_Reese_!"


	8. Bucketfuls of Now

Reese squinted as the clouds seemed to split wide and fat drops of rain turned into something cold and unforgiving. A dark shape slammed by her head and she twisted hard as a flash of pain streaked through her side. Not bad, it wasn't bad. Was it? Her fingers came away wet with rain and blood. Damp earth and the sharp scent of crushed vegetation hit her as she went down, disoriented and breathless. Crews's voice was pitched oddly, a touch of panic surfacing when she didn't answer him. The world swam.

Two shots.

She'd fired two shots.

And she'd hit someone, too. There had been a grunt of pain and surprise, she'd _heard_ it.

_I'm here_, she wanted to say, but she didn't have enough air to push that out. Her gun had been knocked free, too. Reese abruptly found herself staring into a pair of dark eyes, uncomfortable pressure bearing down on her throat. Just the eyes. Nothing else for awhile, then, a flash of lips and the hiss of a rough voice. There wasn't an accent at all, just a flat, cold, and rough voice. Lots of cigarettes behind that voice and the scent of menthol.

"One warning, Detective. Go home. This isn't your case." The pressure increased and spots danced before her eyes, red and black as she was pressed up against rough bark, her boots knocking against the tree trunk. "The next bolt will sever something important. Like your partner's heart."

Blood spattered against her cheek, light pink as the rain diluted it, and she tried to focus on the man's face. Nothing. He was still too close, still pressing down as she struggled, and then the pressure was gone as her head met something hard. She sprawled against the base of the tree, dazed and trying to clear her vision as her fingers flew to her neck. There was no sound anymore save the dull thudding of her heart in her ears and the sheeting rain. Her fingers brushed something embedded in the tree trunk and she realized it was a crossbow bolt, buried down so deep it was barely showing.

_Jesus_.

"Dani?" She turned her head, wheezing slightly as she caught sight of Crews slipping down the incline in a tangle of long legs and soaked clothes, his hair matted dull copper against his head. There was a haunted look on his face that refused to ease and she swallowed, trying to clear her throat.

"I shot him," she croaked. "Nabbas. That was. Him. Had to be. Was a warning."

"You're bleeding," Crews said, his voice hushed as he pressed a hand against her side. Reese gasped and her fingers dug against his arm. "I'll call--" He flipped his phone open and blinked down at the bars, which from what she could tell, were nonexistent. She shook her head.

"It's not that bad," she said thickly. "He missed on purpose. Just need a towel. Get me up." Crews carefully helped her up, his eyes dark and his jaw tight, twitching slightly as he scanned the woods. Her fingers found his chest and he glanced down at her. "He said he'd shoot you through the heart if we didn't go home," Reese murmured. "Said it wasn't our case."

"He just crossed a line," Crews said, turning his face up into the cold rain. She felt his fingers tighten as he helped her up the incline, his sudden silence almost frightening. There was no babble about fruit and not even a soft quip of Zen, just a hardness and the shine of steel in his eyes. "You dropped your gun." Reese heard the click of her nine millimeter settle into its holster and mumbled a _thanks_.

Ballantine's shower was bigger than she thought it would be and had a detachable shower head that made cleaning the slice that the crossbow bolt had made easier. She felt sick to her stomach more than once as Charlie silently and methodically picked dirt, leaves, and a few bits of bark from it, but insisted she didn't need him to call the goddamn paramedics. It was a shallow slice that hadn't nicked bone. It was a scratch, no worse than she'd ever gotten as a resident of the Reese house as a child. She stood under the spray, the hot water stinging as it washed over her injury while Charlie rummaged for gauze and proper bandaging in the kitchen. She heard the soft sound of him muttering Zen, now. Something about patience. Reese stifled the wave that tried to push her from the shower and after him. Nabbas would wait. He'd wait and stalk and then move.

He liked the hunt.

She was, once again, reminded of Roman. Roman wasn't a hunter, he had been a wolf, eager to chase down what he wanted before savaging it. Nabbas was something else. Maybe something that Roman might have become had he been groomed properly. The effectiveness, the power in his hands, the way he'd almost casually had her by the throat -- he was practiced and he was most definitely a killer. Reese sank back against the cool tile and let the hot water wash over her cheek and shoulder.

"Dani," Charlie's voice was in her ear, soft, soothing. "I've got towels, gauze, bandages." She leaned into him and he pulled the tangled, wet strands of hair from her eyes before shutting the water off. "You're okay."

"I'm okay," she said, couching the words in a sigh. "Tired as fuck, though."

"I know." His eyes were sharp as he stared down at her, a hand cupping the back of her head before falling away. "Sleep for awhile, maybe? We have time before we have to go in. I called the warden, we have an appointment to speak with him in about four hours." His voice pulled her down into a hazy state as he rubbed at her hair, and not even the sting of her side as he bandaged it up did much more than nudge her into glancing at his serious expression. "Guards, too, separately," he added thoughtfully. "You think you're up for that?" He paused, peering at her as she blinked and drew a slow breath.

"Reese?"

"I'm up for anything," she said, a soft grin tugging at her lips. "I don't care how much this asshole tries to fuck with us. We're not backing down." His fingers were gentle and she felt his lips brush her shoulder as he secured the pad with another strip of tape. Her palm brushed his hip and met the waistband of a pair of worn jeans.

"We're not." The soft sound of a pressure bandage unraveling sliced across a moment of silence and she winced slightly as he wrapped it around her chest, smoothing wrinkles out almost absently before he secured it with clips. His eyes met hers briefly as he tugged one of his own t-shirts over her head. The soft jersey-knit fabric hit her mid-thigh.

"All better," he said quietly and she offered him a wry smile. She could still see it, though. He wanted to hunt down Nabbas and take him apart slowly. He wanted that badly. She understood that completely, but they were _detectives_, not vigilantes. Her palm found his cheek and her thumb brushed over his cheekbone.

"Don't you go anywhere without me, Charlie Crews," she whispered, wincing slightly as she leaned up into him. His arms immediately encircled her waist as he buried his lips against the join between her neck and shoulder. "I mean it." Her voice was muffled against his chest and she felt him let out a breath.

"I need fruit," he said absently, avoiding her demand. She let it go. "Saw a market up the road. Still want to come?"

"Mm," she mumbled and tried to figure out if that was an actual _yes_, then decided it was. Fuck sleep for the moment. "Can help me put my damn jeans on." Reese felt his silent laughter as his arms tightened carefully. He still smelled like goddamn oranges, the scent familiar and soothing as she buried herself against him.

"I like your jeans _off_," he murmured teasingly and walked them back into the guest room with its clean sheets and their now neatly stacked bags. She grinned, ignoring a flare of pain in favor of kissing him across the lips. "That too." Reese twisted them carefully away from the window and rummaged for a pair of dark jeans and underwear (she pulled out the purple pair and felt him snort as he saw it flash past). "Those? Definitely."

It took work to tug the jeans on, but Charlie's hands helped (and hindered) through the worst of it. They stood there in silence for a long while as the rain drummed against the blue edged roof in a house that wasn't theirs, in a place that was nothing but threatening. Reese blinked, listening to the easy way he breathed and his heart beat. _Still alive, we're still alive_. Right here, in this moment, they were safe, the both of them.

"Reese?" he whispered. She shifted slightly with a soft _mm?_ "This is now, right?"

"Yeah, Crews," she said. "It's now. Still want fruit?"

"Five more minutes," he murmured almost lazily as he buried his lips against her hair.

She let him have ten.


	9. Prison Blue

There was an edge of sunshine at 1:05pm and it skirted around a cloud hopefully as they made their way back from Lake Earl Market with roast beef sandwiches and a few bags of necessaries. Nectarines, oranges, two peaches, grapes, lemons (big fat ones, on the sweet side), and a few blushing apples. He'd stopped for crabs, too (which were not up the road, but further in town), while Reese dozed in the passenger seat, battered and worn. He was worried about the finger-shaped bruises already blossoming against her neck, but she wouldn't let him take her in to get them looked at.

Stubborn Reese.

His chest was tight and heavy as he glanced at her. In some ways, this felt worse than Arrowbear, worse than when Roman had her. In some ways, he blamed himself for even agreeing to this. If he hadn't, they'd be in Los Angeles working the case at their own desks and probably getting nowhere, but they'd be _safe_. He sat at a red light and rubbed at a throbbing temple as another car idled beside him. He heard the sound of a power window going down and glanced over.

Crews froze.

Carter Manning.

Corrections officer. Pelican Bay State Prison. Dark hair, a little swarthy, his nose too big for his face, his teeth slightly gapped, white like paint. Crews blinked and his fingers tightened around the wheel as the man gestured. He could hear the shout through the window and carefully turned his head the other way.

"Hey _convict_," Manning called, "you come back for more? Couldn't stay away from my baton, huh? You like it, _huh_?" He ribbed another man and Crews almost winced. John Gauteman, pale, rat faced man, black hair subtly graying, scraggly eyebrows. He could feel the toes of their boots in his gut and the way their batons had come down. He could feel the cold, wet concrete on his cheek. _You like that_, convict? _Do it again, Manning. Fucking convict, now, aren't you? Maybe we should let Blank play with him, yeah? Maybe we'll leave you in the yard for awhile, _convict_. Maybe you'll miss your yard time. You listening, Crews?_ Reese was out cold and didn't stir as his chest heaved, panic sliding in like the rain against the windshield. This was Crescent City. This was Pelican Bay. This was _Hell_. Why? Why was he back here? Why did he come _back_?

For Reese. For Ballantine. For this case. To catch a killer named Victor Nabbas. That was why. There was a good reason, a very, very good reason.

Calm. He had to.

_Be clam_.

His teeth grit and he fixed the men with an icy stare, refusing to give them the satisfaction of breaking him down. They jeered for a moment longer and then took off, tires screeching as the light changed. He pulled himself back together, swallowing the knot in his throat down. Crews stayed there for a moment longer, watching the rain bleed and sheet as thunder rumbled around him.

"If we live, we live; if we die, we die; if we suffer, we suffer; if we are terrified, we are terrified. There is no problem about it," he said very softly, quoting Alan Watts, as he breathed through the panic, and breathed through the fear. He pressed the accelerator and kept them moving until the tires hit the gravel drive of Ballantine's house. "Reese," he whispered, leaning across the car to brush an errant wisp of hair from her cheek. His voice was still a little shaky, but it wasn't too bad. She stirred and blinked.

"Fell asleep," she said, her voice cracking slightly as she scrubbed at her eyes.

"It's okay," he murmured. "It's fine. We're back." Crews watched a bright yellow banana slug work its way across the rail of the front porch and felt her fingers close around his wrist. She brought him home, just like that, and a curl of a smile touched his lips. The world could press in on him, guards could stab at him and shake him and all she had to do was touch him. He glanced at her, at her wide, dark eyes, at what lie behind them and found it impossible to stifle the sound that worked its way from his lips.

"I missed something," she whispered, letting go of his wrist to lean her fingertips against his cheek as she studied his face. "Charlie?" He shook his head slightly. _It was nothing. It's over._ "Charlie," her voice dropped and he closed his eyes as her thumb eased over his bottom lip.

"Guards, just guards," he said very quietly, no traces of the cop or the prisoner, just the man. Just Charlie Crews. "I knew their faces. It's fine, now, it's just fine. They were just being--" Crews gestured wordlessly. _Assholes_. Reese grimaced. "Should get the fruit inside, eat lunch. We'll have to rush a little to make that interview." Her eyes caught his and held. Once again he shook her head. "I'm not walking. This is my job. All of this is connected to Ballantine. We establish motive, we tie his movements down, we make it airtight, get Nabbas and Ballantine in the same place at the same time, establish a chain of events. We nail Nabbas down tight, we close the case, and it never comes back. Never, never comes back. I wish it would stop raining. I think it should stop raining."

"It'll stop raining, Charlie," she said simply, letting her fingers fall away. "It always stops raining."

"Does it?" he asked, hoisting bags out of the car as he grabbed the sandwiches. Under the cover of the porch, as he worked the key into the lock, he caught her eyes. The look he found in them made him still as she shifted on her feet. She smiled just a little and nudged the door open with her knee before slipping past him. When there wasn't any sun, like now, Reese was full of it. She was full of everything at exactly the right moment and she burned fiercely.

He saw that.

He saw it later, too, as she drove them into the gates of Pelican Bay State Prison, her expression hard as she stared down the guards. The guard towers rose above him and he could feel the weight pressing into him again as he locked the fear away. They had a job to do. Weaselly faced Brody Harrick flashed an even grin at him as they walked, single file, with Reese behind him (protecting his back, he realized), through the noisy halls of the prison. The spit-shined floors were cold beneath his shoes, and Reese's boots were gunshot echoes as they worked their way through.

"Prisoner incoming!" A guard yelled and all activity ceased while an inmate passed by on a catwalk, guards with rifles above, guards with guns escorting. He felt Reese's palm touch his back and heat of it soaked through his shirt. They moved again and another steel door rattled open to give way to an austere room and the thin lipped face of the current warden. He wasn't a bad man. Paul Harris had beliefs, but he was just a man. A man who stared Crews down for a long moment.

"Detectives," he said crisply and gestured to the chairs. Both guards stood at attention inside the doorway, their eyes riveted to Crews. He could feel the weight of their stares on the back of his head. Reese began the questioning, each one familiar and routine. Each one getting them nowhere on a long list of nowheres. The guards were next. Same questions, different answers, nothing conclusive until they were almost out of people. Just one more. Reese looked exhausted, like the walls were trying to swallow _her_ down, too.

"You're here about those guys what killed Blank in cell number six, ain't you?"

He glanced up at the voice, surprised. The woman was short, stocky, her thick honey blonde hair pulled back from her face, her oddly colored brown eyes almost reddish in the florescent light. Candice Blockman. She'd worked nights. He remembered her face for its uniqueness, and for the minute thread of kindness she'd shown him. The Zen book. He'd always suspected she'd left it for him.

"You know something about that, Candice?" Crews asked softly.

"Nope," she said, but scratched gestured for the pad Reese had been taking notes on. "Nobody knows about that. You ain't gonna find a damn soul who _knows_ about that. I'd go on home if I was you." She slid the pad to Crews, her face serious, but he saw the glint in her eyes.

_Saw that man you be looking for. You come talk to me outside these walls._

He smiled and jotted down a few words before pushing the pad back at her.

_You like crab?_ Blockman's face broke into a smile. _Ballantine's. 9pm work? _There was a slight nod and then she stood, brushing her Corrections issue pants off and re-tightening the way her bun was wrapped in a secure knot. She nodded to Reese, who managed a surprised, if polite, smile.

"Well, I guess that makes us done, then," Crews sighed and rose, stepping around the bolted down chair as Reese got to her feet as well.

The long, dark procession outside was slow and painful. The guards took their time, stopping at five different intervals as prisoners passed. Crews felt dizzy by the time the rainsoaked air finally greeted him. He felt the rifles pinpointing him square between his shoulder blades and heard a guard hiss _boom_ at his back. The car was safe and he closed his door before the shakes began. Reese said nothing the whole way back to Ballantine's, but her warm hand closed over his, grounding him, connecting him to her as he shook Pelican Bay off.

The worst was over.

Candice had times, dates, logs, all the movements, and the security tapes that covered the times that William Blank had been taken in. They weren't Pelican Bay issue, they were tiny. Almost FBI issue. The quality was decent and they watched Pullard and Raine move Blank and march him out. Another tape showed the licence plate of the vehicle used to transport the man. Reese caught it first--recognized his eyes--and identified Nabbas. A soft conversation followed about the wheres and whys and hows. Candice had everything about Ballantine down to a tee and she'd done it because _Ballantine_ had asked her to do it. They had Nabbas and Blank in the same place and same time, but not Nabbas and _Ballantine_. There was no direct physical evidence linking Nabbas to the man. By the time Candice, who said she would testify to all of the facts, left, Reese looked so faded that he had to scoop her into his arms.

He expected protest and got none.

"Hey," he said quietly as her fingers curled against his chest.

"Hey," she said, her voice a soft mumble as her lips brushed his neck. Crews pulled his fingers through her hair, gently untangling knots when he found them. "Charlie." He _hmm_ed, brushing a thumb over her temple. "Call Rayborn. Get the jet. Gotta go home before shit goes down."

"We'll leave in the morning," he said, moving down the hall into the guest room. "Early. I talked to him while you were in the kitchen talking to Candice." She was silent. "Reese?" He shifted her against his chest and she murmured, wincing slightly as he set her down on the bed and worked her boots off. "Sleep." The sigh he got in response told him that he didn't need to insist and he curled himself around her. It was a long while before he slept at all.

_"All rise." There was a dreadful sound as people stood and then he stood, getting to his feet with the desperate weight of the world on his shoulders. Jennifer didn't look at him, in fact, she turned away to stare at the judge. "Charles Crews. It is my duty to sentence you to be remanded into the custody of Pelican Bay State Prison for the remainder of your natural life for three accounts of murder in the first degree. On this day..." He didn't hear the rest, not a word of it as the world he knew spun and crashed and fell away._

_It fell into pain and violence and death._

_It fell into fire._

_He slept and woke to white walls and blood spattered moments, to shivs and darkness, to the flickering lights, to an empty yard. He died and lived thousand, a million times. Over and over, each day the same, maddening, unrelenting, his thoughts circular. _I'm a cop, I'm a cop, I'm a cop. _He was innocent, he was guilty, he was innocent, innocent. Connie was supposed to get him out. She didn't come. Reese was supposed to be there, she was gone (he could hear her screaming, somewhere). The cell was cold, and he bunched up against the wall, trying to breathe. This was wrong. _

_He was free. God. Oh God. He was free, he was free. He'd gotten free. _

_A guard slammed his baton into his face, an inmate pulled a shiv, and there was pain, so much--_

Crews bolted upright, gasping, cold sweat rolling down his spine. Reese was awake in an instant, her grogginess shaken, and he stared at her for a long, wild-eyed moment. All he could hear was his own breath, ragged in his ears as she pulled him close, wordless. He shook bodily and couldn't stop, his fingers buried in her hair, his lips against her neck. All he could hear was her voice in his ear, over and over.

"I'm here. I'm real. Charlie_,_ _Jesus,_" her lips brushed his ear as he clung to her, "I won't let go, I won't let you go."

He needed to get back to Los Angeles.

Now.


	10. A New Day

It was still raining and thunder rattled the windows in waves. Her phone flashed on vibrate and Reese leaned to answer it, Charlie still buried against her with his lips against her collarbone. He was quiet now, but not asleep, and his breath still came in gasps followed by minute tremors. She knew there was no way to just make it go away. It had to wear itself out and then you had to pull yourself back together. She _knew_ that.

After Alejandro, after the cocaine overdose, after her _life_, she knew that. Shit came down on you hard enough to make you crack if you let it. There were moments where she had just barely forced herself to face the day. Charlie's shit was worse. She could feel it run through him, though he hadn't really said a goddamn word. All she could to was hold on and tell him he wasn't alone.

"Reese," she said quietly, running her fingers against Charlie's neck and into his hair.

"You need to leave." Her brow furrowed. "Detective Reese, you and Crews need to get out of that house, right now. Not two minutes ago, _now_."

"Candice? Slow down and tell me--" she began only to have the phone go dead on her. Thunder broke loud as she heard a window shatter and felt Charlie stiffen, then reach for his gun. His face, lit by the light of her cell phone, was frighteningly pale, twisted in the half grimace he wore. Reese closed her fingers around her own gun and slowly blinked at him for a moment.

He paused as she turned the backlight to her phone off.

"Crews?" she whispered and felt his fingers brush her jaw before he was kissing her hard.

_Don't die_.

She kissed him back, the sharp edge of something desperate breaking between them.

_I won't_.

They both slipped off the bed, their heads down as Reese picked out a text message to Rayborn. He was still in town, waiting. Reese knew that instinctively, like she knew that plane was gassed up, sitting on the tarmac, ready to go. For some reason, _this time_, Rayborn was working with them. God only knew why. There was no movement down the hall, nothing in the master bedroom, nothing in the entryway.

The living room.

A flash of white.

Reese stepped into the room just as Crews pulled her away roughly. She bent back, gasping as she felt the sting-hiss of a crossbow bolt slice through the air close enough to snag a piece of her hair. The bolt buried itself into the wall with a solid _thunk_ as Crews checked to make sure she wasn't hit. Reese shot him a startled look and watched his expression harden. She knew where he was now, she knew exactly where he was. He was a cop, now. A pissed off cop.

And so was she.

"Victor Nabbas," Crews called. "You _really_ want to put down the crossbow because I am _not_ in a mood to humor you right now. I mean, you can try back in a few days. I might want to play dodgeball, then. You know, I was always pretty good a dodgeball when I was a kid, except when I got tall and gangly, and all my limbs stuck out. You get to be an easy target, then, I guess." Reese caught the gesture he made and nodded as Crews took out his cell phone and dialed hers.

Rough laughter sounded.

"I can reload faster than you can shoot, Charlie Crews," the man said. "And your sweet little partner? I think I'll enjoy shooting her, too." Reese bristled, ready to swing around the corner and call this a justified shooting as she took Nabbas's life. She'd be okay with that. Straight between the eyes, just like that, _boom_. Her phone buzzed against her hip and she set it skittering across the wood floor. Nabbas shot at it and Crews and Reese both had their guns in his face a moment later.

"You're under arrest for the attempted murder of two Homicide detectives," Reese snapped.

"Two overworked and _extremely_ unhappy Homicide detectives," Crews added with a sigh as he cuffed Nabbas. "Not to mention the other people you murdered. That's alotta charges, Mr. Nabbas. That? Is alotta dead people."

Nabbas laughed and he was still laughing when they packed up their shit and threw him into the back seat before heading to the airport. Rayborn met them at Del Norte County Airport, mildly impressed as they shoved Nabbas inside. Crews shoved the bags to one side and sank against the plush ivory seating as Reese strapped Nabbas in. So far, he hadn't done anything except laugh every time they glanced at him. This time, he stopped laughing.

"Rayborn," he growled.

Mickey Rayborn just smiled and crossed his legs.

"You find everything you were looking for, Detectives?" he asked, pulling his gaze away from the cuffed Nabbas.

"We've got a solid case," Reese said with a nod, shifting uncomfortably as the plane jammed her back into her seat. The night sky cleared as they shot through the clouds and she heard Crews sigh in relief. No more rain. "There's enough evidence to put Victor, here, away for a very, very long time."

"I can't ever say I was too fond of you. Mister Nabbas," Rayborn said with a slight shake of his head. "I always thought Harriman was a little...overzealous when it came to sending you after mistakes. You like it, too much. You know, the killing. And that is why I'm here with Detectives Crews and Reese. You see, Victor, you made a very large mistake when you killed Pat Ballantine. Generally, I agree, people should not get in the way of real justice being done, but when your own shoddy crap comes back to haunt you because your handpicked men panic? That is going to bite your ass fairly hard. First rule is always know your men, you know that more than most."

"Fuck you, Rayborn," Nabbas growled.

"You're going to fit in just fine," Rayborn murmured absently. "You'll like prison. Maybe you'll even survive a few years into your life sentence, if they don't put you into Death Row. I dunno. Not sure a judge will take kindly to a cop killer, but then...Blank got life, didn't he?" Reese watched the exchange wearily and found herself leaning into Crews as Rayborn paused and then frowned at her. "Dani," he said quietly and she glanced at him, blinking, "you're going to want to get that wound looked at. I'm afraid you've aggravated it considerably."

"It can wait," she said with a shrug. He laughed and shook his head. Reese thought she caught him muttering about her father for a moment. probably something about how stubborn he was. She didn't want to be reminded of Jack Reese and leaned into Crews, who made a face as he inspected the wrap. Little spots of blood were starting to leak through. She shot him a sharp look and he raised his hands, though it didn't stop the worry on his face from bleeding through.

"Kiddo," Rayborn said quietly. "I think you deserve a vacation after this one. Don't you?"

"Once Nabbas is booked and in the system," Crews said, pulling out an orange. "I might just think about it."

Reese closed her eyes and leaned her cheek against his shoulder as the sharp, fresh scent of orange peel misted the air. She could feel Rayborn watching them, but, at the moment, she didn't give two fucks what was going on in his head. They had evidence, they had a witness. They had a closed goddamned case, and, best of all, they were headed _home_. Two hours later, they had Nabbas in the back of a police car. An hour after that, Reese finished typing up the report and sent it over to Tidwell, who sat in his office, his head in his hands. Crews nursed tea, a slight smile tugging at his lips.

"What?" she asked, arching a brow as she shifted to lean back in her seat.

"That kid was right," he said, taking a sip of tea.

"What kid?" Reese frowned pointedly and waited for him to circle around to whatever original thought had hit him.

"You remember the Anna Silvers case?" he asked, stifling a yawn. She blinked at him and nodded, shrugging. "You remember those kids we interviewed who were all sharing partners?" She nodded again, her eyes widening slight with a _get to the point, Crews_ look. "That kid was right." He took a sip of tea, then grinned. "You _are_ a pretty, pretty cop."

Reese snorted as she finished the last piece of half a bagel, balled up the napkin, and tossed it at him. He caught it, an amused expression lighting his face. She shoved her chair back and rose. His eyes were on her all the way to the coffee pot and _all_ the way back. When she glanced up at him, she found him standing at the window, tea in hand, basking in the clear morning light of a new Los Angeles day.


	11. Ace of Spades

Crews stood back, glancing at his evidence wall in the closet he still kept locked. Victor Nabbas's mug shot hung just below the empty fourth box that now read _Tomas Harriman_, who was connected to Mickey Rayborn right along with Jack Reese. Closer. He was coming closer to getting all the pieces. Crews knew that and he was thinking about the angles of approach he needed to peg Harriman. He was also thinking about Nabbas, the crossbows, the playing card.

Ace of Spades.

Traditionally, the Ace of Spades was considered a symbol of death, and yet one could also say it was the 'mystery of life.' It was also used as a psychological weapon in the Vietnam War against the Vietnamese, thanks to the United States troops belief that the Vietnamese traditional approach to the symbol was death and misfortune. That, however, was not the case, but it did help American morale. Crews was fairly certain Nabbas wasn't trying to raise morale.

But the card marking smacked of ritual.

Ritual.

_Everything was connected_.

He paced for a moment, frowning at the picture of Nabbas and then up at the empty space where Harriman's was written. Wheeling away, he sighed and shut the lights off before locking the door and hiding he key.

"Crews?" Reese's voice echoed up the stairs. "You coming or am I gonna stand here like a goddamn idiot all day?"

"Hang on," he said quietly. "I just forgot a bag."

"You bringing the entire country with you?" She glanced at him for awhile as he hefted a small carry on bag and flashed a quick smile at her. Reese looked wary and a little uncomfortable, dressed in browns with a flash of green.

"We don't have to go," Crews said, taking the steps two at a time. "We could stay here, even. There's things to do in Los Angeles that aren't _cop_ things. Like pie. We could go get more pie and--"

"_Crews_." He grinned again and leaned to ease a kiss against her jaw that only vaguely mollified her. "I am never letting you talk me into this again."

"Going on vacation?" he asked, noting she packed _one_ bag and nothing else. He had three. Just because. Crews watched her make a face, though he knew she _might_ have even been looking forward to her first vacation _ever_. But she pointedly hid that and scowled at him.

He watched the landscape fly by as they drove into LAX, parked, and walked in to, once again, use one of Rayborn's Skylark jets. He'd been amused to find a notecard with two tickets to Tibet in it along with Rayborn's elegant scrawl.

_Kiddo, it's about time you take her out for something besides Los Angeles Chinese. You'll like the hotel and the location. Least I could do._

_~M. Rayborn_

He'd almost tossed them, but like the keys to the boat Rayborn had once given him, Crews had kept them. Everything had a use. It was when Reese woke from another nightmare that he'd given in and told Tidwell they were taking a two week leave. Frankly, he needed the time to shake Pelican Bay out of his system and Reese needed to shake Ballantine's murder. With Nabbas out of the way and currently integrating into prison society and Ballantine's murder solved, a trip to Tibet of all places was exactly what they needed.

Reese strode across the tarmac, her hair catching the wind as she turned to smile at him and he kept the instant sharp in his mind. The angle of her face as the sun hit it lit tiny freckles up and he watched her hair float, suspended in the sun for a moment that was gone too soon. When she turned away, he saw she was reaching for her phone. A second later, he pulled up short as she stopped dead and hung up.

Her face was pale.

"Victor Nabbas disappeared from lock up. No one can figure out _when_," she said, her eyes searching his, "and Crescent City PD called to notify Tidwell last night that Candice Blockman was found murdered in her apartment."

He went still as her fingers closed around his arm.

"There was a crossbow bolt through her heart." His eyes fixed on the open cockpit door and the ivory interior. There was a reason for everything. "Crews?" Her fingers brushed his chin and he blinked down at her. "There was an Ace of Spade and a note."

"Get on the plane," he said softly, his eyes steel. "Now."

"_Crews_," she said urgently, not above fighting with him.

"I know," he said.

"Goddammit, Charlie." She was pissed as they boarded. "We can't leave this. Not now. Tidwell wants us back at the station, says Nabbas is gunning fo--" His fingers touched her lips and his eyes met hers, hard and cool before they softened just a little. He touched her cheek, then her forehead. They weren't running.

"I know," he murmured and pulled her into a seat. "I know, Dragonfish."

He watched her face change as she realized what he'd done. Rayborn had given him the tickets for a reason. She was silent as they took off and he felt her fist tighten around his shirt.

"Jesus H.," she whispered. "Everything _is_ connected. Everything."

Charlie Crews smiled.


End file.
